


the chance of your survival (welcome the reaper)

by Averia



Category: DCU (Comics), Nightwing (Comics), Titans (Comics)
Genre: Death, Family Issues, Gen, Superpowers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-11
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:40:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23596225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Averia/pseuds/Averia
Summary: Jason Peter Todd comes into Dick's life with everything he doesn't want to see. A place, a time and a bullet.
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Donna Troy, Dick Grayson & Jason Todd
Comments: 24
Kudos: 133
Collections: Dick Grayson Week 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Dick Grayson Week 2020. ~~There might be more where this came from...~~ That didn't take long.
> 
> April 11th: bottom!Dick | Court of Owls | **(Super)Power AU**

The first and the last memories he has of his parents are their falls from a height he never learns to comprehend. The images follow him into the night, wake him as a baby. By the time he can catch onto the trapeze - not fly, not yet -, he knows what he dreams about, and he knows those dreams are called nightmares.

Dick never questions them. They have existed as long as he can remember.

When he sees a man behind the stage, he has only ever seen as a smeared shadow in his terrible dreams, he begins to question what they might mean, but he is only a nine-year-old boy. And superheroes? Just a term best mentioned in stories.

The era has just begun.

His parents fall. They fall so vividly as he has never seen them fall before. Still, for a moment, Dick does not know if he is dreaming. As his mum and dad meet the ground, limbs sprawled in all directions and blood soaking into the sand that glitters ruby red beneath the show light, Dick wonders when he will wake up.

With nine and a half Dick realizes that he could have saved them had he been aware of his terrible gift. It starts then that he begins to notice the smell of death on every living being he meets.

It clings to Bruce. It clings to Alfred. An earthy smell, not a stench, but at times suffocating.

The first time he meets Superman, he can't quite comprehend that even Metropolis' beacon of light is fated to die. That night, Dick cries like he hasn't for years, but he lives with his curse, treats and saves victims of villains he knows will die anyway. Internal bleeding. Too much fear toxin.

Some people they truly safe from those fates, and still, Dick sees them die another day. Not years from then, just months or days.

It takes time to figure out how his ability works. All he needs is a touch, and if the person dies within ten years, he will know how and where. If he concentrates on the image, pries it apart with practice and time, he can even figure out when.

The first person he meets that carries death so heavily he can taste it is Raven. And he knows, instinctively, that she can't die. Dick clings to that feeling and among meta-humans, aliens, demons and Amazons the curse he carries starts to lessen its weight.

All the more jarring that Jason Peter Todd comes into Dick's life with everything he doesn't want to see. A place, a time and a bullet.

"Is Nightwing supposed to be here?" is the remark with which their encounter starts and even then, Dick can already taste death, feel the cold breeze accompanying those who are fated to die far sooner than they should.

He didn't want to come to Gotham, wouldn't be here if it were avoidable. He definitely doesn't want to like the new Robin. He doesn't want a new brother. He doesn't want to see the boy that now carries his legacy without knowing the meaning of it. A bat carries death, but a robin? A robin sings and chirps, announces the return of spring.

"Should a pipsqueak like you be out all alone?" he questions without turning around.

"A pipsqueak that's a head taller than you were, for sure," Robin shoots back.

Dick rolls his eyes, ignores the suffocating cigarette smoke wafting through the air.

"At least this pipsqueak wasn't a nobody."

Is he surprised that Jason hits the roof where he once stood as he sails through the air? Hardly.

With Robin on his tail, going after his true purpose is nigh impossible. Vigilante might already be waiting for him and might as well be mad if he is too late for their rendezvous, but Robin doesn't need to find out about Dick's meetings with antiheroes lest he tells Bruce. Then again, what's another nail in the coffin?

He pulls at the yellow cape - at his yellow cape -, chuckling when Jason sprawls over the rooftop like an angry cat, still catching himself on hands and feet. His expression is nasty. Dick doesn't know why Jason thought he would win. No matter.

"What do you want?"

"See what all the fuss is about, obviously," Jason snaps, and Dick huffs, weight shifting, so he can leave.

"Sorry, I'm not a tourist attraction," he calls out, already off the roof before Jason can even grasp for him. He watches out of the shadows as Jason searches, whispering profanities beneath his breath. It's nearly... it's nearly ok.

On the other hand, finding your not really little brother sneaking around your hotel room at ungodly hours, sun tinting everything into an orange-pink light, isn't ok at all. It was a hard night. Especially because Vigilante was angry. Dick thinks Jason has no right to complain about the headlock he is held in. Jason woke him up with no subtlety after all.

But it's hard to hate someone when you know how they die. And Dick nearly grows numb with the realization that it's the first death not out of reach, the first he can prevent. And even as Jason bickers and rants and is all in all annoying, Dick believes Jason deserves to live a long and happy life.

So, if he comes back to Gotham for one night, even though Bruce is present, just to tackle Jason out of the way of a stray bullet he knew was coming for weeks now, just to be insulted for it, Dick takes the behavior in strides.

"No need to thank me, Little Wing." He isn't used to be thanked in Gotham anyway, Bruce wasn't big on that either after all. "Just call me if you want to hang out with anyone who isn't over the age of thirty."

Jason stares at the piece of paper that Dick ripped out of an old notebook in a hurry. The black phone number is visible against the white paper even under the moonlight.

"Where are you from? The 90s?" Jason mutters beneath his breath, but takes it, clutching the crumpled piece of paper to his chest.

.

Space is wide and endless. It echoes Dick's anguish as he realizes, he never prevented Jason's death, he only made it worse.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After an evening of rapid writing, I decided to continue this after all. Thank you all for commenting and leaving kudos. :)

Bruce hits hard. His fist and his words. For the first time, Dick thinks he deserves it. He has no right to call the manor his home if Jason will never call anything home again except for the dark, hard coffin 6 feet under.

The suffocating cigarette smoke leads him to Jason's grave when Bruce doesn't, and Dick imagines the annoying little brother, he didn't want to know, sitting on the gravestone in his pixie boots while blowing out smoke.

"Never wanted to be a tourist attraction either," are the snarky words he receives as a greeting, and Dick chuckles wetly, chin against his chest, and hands deep inside his jacket pockets.

More graves line his path into the future. Dick can see them, countless of them. The Titans are growing. The Justice League too. Heroes are on the rise.

When Joey dies, Dick is sick to his stomach, but he talks with Slade and despite his guilt, and anger, and hate the rough fight helps, no matter how short. A part of him still wants to deny what happened, even though he has seen Slade push his sword through Joey's back countless times. 

The blood never leaves his vision.

When Pantha dies and Baby Wildebeest and all the other Titans that are too unknown to the public to be mourned by the people they saved, Dick makes sure each of them gets their rightful monuments in the Titans Tower.

It's the least he can do.

When Tamaran gets destroyed and New Tamaran is befallen by the same fate, and Kory cries and sobs and screams, Dick retches and claws and wishes he weren't alive.

And he would think - if he couldn't see what he could - there wouldn't ever be anything worse than letting a planet with nearly all its people die, but there is. Because death follows Donna like a cloud of smoke, it has for nearly ten years now. He wonders if Kory would survive to lose her, wonders if he would.

"Hey," he says the evening before Donna's departure to Themyscira. Just a short trip, except she is never supposed to return from it. "Can you do me a favor?"

Donna seems hardly surprised by the request, turning to him with her arms crossed and a crooked smile on her lips, "Shoot."

It's selfish. There are worse ways to die than by accident in a training's fight thanks to meddling gods. Who knows what he'll cause by interfering.

"If you train with Philippus, don't look up for the seagulls, no matter how long they squawk."

Whatever surprise was missing from Donna's face before is there for all the world to see now, but Donna doesn't question him, not about how he knows that Philippus is meant to train her now and not what he means with his cryptic words. Maybe Amazons are too used to meddling gods and seers to question even the words of an ordinary human from man's world.

If he is human.

In the last years, Dick has often wondered if he should speak to the mystics around him. Raven would surely help him search for an answer or maybe Zatanna knows why he sees what he does. And if they can't help there are always Diana and Dr. Fate too. 

Something always holds him back. He has kept quiet for so long, it's impossible to form into words what he can truly see and feel and smell.

The suffocating smell of kindling fire stays behind even as Donna leaves, and Dick ignores his stomach aches, concentrates on the petty crimes the Titans can solve.

Donna returns with a bandage around her shoulder, but she isn't dead. Her fellow Titans fret as if she is. Kory is raising hell in a way that makes Dick laugh despite himself, as Donna has to promise to train her concentration skills with Kory from now. They are each other's chosen partners so often already, Dick knows he'll have to start complaining soon before he gets no time with them at all.

"I couldn't not look," Donna says as Dick brews the tea Donna brought with her. Themysciran tea leaves are a delicacy usually reserved for Amazons, the taste too strong for a human, but they help against the death permeating the air, mellows it out. 

"They surprised me. It was a whole flock. But I remembered your words. Your serious expression. 

“The head of the speer only pushed through my shoulder." Donna clutches onto the bandage. A pristine white. "Mind you, had I reacted a second later, my arm would be gone... or worse."

Worse, Dick recalls. Dull eyes reflecting the blue sky, seagulls roaming ahead, cawing and giggling as blood drips out of Donna's open mouth.

"Menalippe, our oracle, I don't believe I've spoken of her before, said I was lucky. One of the gods is meddling with the island, and yet, a patron held his hand over me."

Dick takes another sip of his tea. Themysciran immortality clings to it. It tastes like peppermint must taste like for normal people. The tea calms his mind as much as it shocks it clear.

"How did you know?" Donna finally asks.

Dick wants to give her more, but all he can say is, "I've seen it for the past years. Again and again."

Maybe it's the look in his eyes that doesn't make Donna question him further. She has met the fates. Dick can barely imagine what they see from day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute, second to second. But they are ancient beings, and they were born with their duty, so maybe it isn't bad for them at all.

"An unfair burden to carry," Donna finally says, expression pained, "If I can help, please, tell me."

Dick smiles, thankful and raises his cup. "This, right here, us. It's enough."

He sees Omen die. He doesn't expect Donna to die with her. They give their lives away to save them. And Donna looked at him, gaze sure, and mouth set. Even if Dick had seen it coming, he wouldn't have been able to prevent it.

.

For better or worse, Donna returns. Changed but whole, and Dick rejoices, but Jason stays dead, and there is still no reason to the things he can see and smell and taste; to the things, he is starting to hear.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Starting to think I should have called the fic "What the heck is going on?" Lol.

Dick hears about Red Hood long before he ever comes face to face with the violent vigilante.

Before he meets Red Hood, he meets Jason.

It's not as if he is searching for the scent anymore. It has been years since he last smelled the suffocating cigarette smoke above Jason's grave.

He just wants to pick up something to eat after a hard day of work, preparing to be out and about on the rooftops only a few hours later when the scent hits him harder than a lucky goon’s fist.

In a way, it's more concentrated than ever, poignant to the point that Dick feels like a step further towards the origin of the scent will actually kill him.

But he follows the trail, spurred on by emotions he thought long buried, by the hope that Jason might have returned too.

Blindly, he ends up in a motor shop, streets away from his original destination just to see a burly mechanic talk to the owner of a red bead-up car. His heart stutters. Dick sees the lanky teen in the broad-shouldered, rough-looking man without even trying.

"Jason?"

His voice echoes through the garage. The mechanic turns with a scoff, irritation clear on his face till he sees the uniform. Dick doesn't care. The sea-green eyes of his little brother are wide in shock. It breaks his heart, but somehow, through the awkward silence right after his exclamation, they end up in a little Italian pizza place Dick usually stops at as Nightwing.

"How did you recognize me?" Jason asks after the first piece of pizza Margherita is gone, wiping his greasy fingers on the napkin even though he clearly craves for more.

Dick doesn't know what to say. Telling Jason that he saved him from a bullet only for him to be tortured and killed by the Joker isn't an option. Just thinking about it makes him sick. He did that. It’s his fault.

"I just,” his mouth is dry, the attentive eyes seeming to look right through his white lie, “You aren't the first one to come back... I'm sure you remember Donna?"

Jason slowly nods, picking at the second piece of pizza. There is that silence again that breaks his heart a little more.

Jason scrutinizes him hesitantly beneath his tresses, strands falling into his face, one of them a shocking white. The line of his mouth is just that tad bit more bitter than it ever was before. Unforgivingly, it reminds Dick that nothing will ever be the same again.

"How?" he eventually asks, hiding the little Themysciran tea-leaf charm in the palm of his hand. So close to Jason, he can smell what has made the smoky fragrance so pungent even though Donna's scent has grown fainter over the years. Ra's green abomination has always reeked, taints everything it touches like an illness.

Jason shrugs, gaze sliding to the large and wide shop windows. "Apparently, Superboy punched through the space-time continuum, but I call that bullshit."

“Yeah?” Dick asks, “What’s your theory?”

The way Jason talks and gestures, reminds Dick of Roy in their early days. He doesn't know if he likes it, wonders if Jason had grown up into the same young man now sitting in front of him without dying. Not that it matters. He can't change that anymore.

(Or maybe he could. If he dared.)

At the end of their silence speckled talk, Dick pushes his napkin towards Jason and earns a chuckle for his effort.

"Still the 90s, huh?"

Dick grins, pulling the napkin back on second thought to scribble a second number down. Jason stares at it in confusion.

"What's that?"

Dick grins smugly, leaning back with his arms crossed behind his head and his ankles locked, foot nudging Jason’s. "My landline."

The rough laugh leaving Jason's throat fills him with warmth, and he thinks it's ok, like he always does with Jason, until he is nearly skewered with Red Hood's Kris on Gotham's rooftops, the wavy blade ripping through his costume as if there is no armor webbed into it at all - and despite what people think, there is. The scent of suffocating cigarette smoke lies in the air, presses down on his throat like green fumes even when the blade doesn't dare to.

Nursing a bruised jaw and a bandaged flesh wound while kneeling in his apartment with his arms around the pot his Themysciran tea plant grows in, Dick wonders if he will be able to see his own death before it comes.

Batman swoops in through his still open window. For a second the shadow hesitates, but a bruise and a white bandage aren't of concern. If such injuries were, his family would never get anything done. Bruce inquires how his run-in with Red Hood went anyway.

...he shouldn't have told Oracle that he was about to engage with the Hood.

"Do you know who it is yet?" Dick asks when he gives his hole-filled report, watering the multicolored tea plant. Greens, yellows, and reds streak through the leaves. The irony isn't lost to him.

"No," Bruce speaks up after a while, "A Gotham native, I presume, but nothing beyond that yet."

Dick hums. Bruce doesn't know; there would be more teeth gritting, and fuming, and self-hatred if he did. With their relationship as mended as Dick suspects it will ever be, he wants to tell him, but... Would Bruce understand? No aliens. No metas. Bruce even hates magic. What's there to tell, really...

Dick looks after the dark shadow, watering can in a tilt even though no water is left. He hopes dearly and desperately that he will never even catch a glimpse of Bruce's death. Maybe it's a good thing that they don't touch anymore. Maybe that's how the distance started. Maybe if he learned to reach out again, Bruce wouldn’t turn away.

Maybe.

He doesn't search out Jason, even though he could. He doesn't know what to tell him. In the end, Jason comes to him. Dick blinks at the Bat Burgers, sees it as the reconciliation it might be supposed to be. A reconciliation Jason isn't aware he knows they need.

Before Jason can leave, Dick hugs him on a whim, and Jason tenses up so much, Dick isn't sure if he'll have another bruise on his jaw any moment now. Then, Jason hugs back.

And Dick can feel damp earth on his tongue, wood beneath his cracked fingernails, green water in his lungs.

Someone speaks, words unrecognizable but he knows that lilt. _Talia._

He finds himself in the Titans Tower after Jason leaves, needs to get that smell out of his nose, these images from his mind, and that voice out of his head. The Themysciran garden well-hidden from the outside is salvation, soothes him like his houseplant can't. The plants are unrestrained, have a connection to the center of the Earth Dick longs for.

The morning after, Dick learns that Red Hood killed nine people in less than a day. Donna sits down beside him as he watches the news reel, head leaning against his shoulder. Since her return, she always seems to know when he visits the garden.

"Who is the Red Hood?"

Dick lets out a coarse laugh.

"Jason," he whispers, can feel Donna tense before the name even fully falls past his lips. But she knows, so she doesn't ask how he does. (He sees, smells, tastes, hears.)

"Does Bruce know?" is the whispered question instead, concern written all over her face.

Dick smiles wryly, not pulling away when Donna brushes strands of black hair out of his face. "What do you think?"

"Oh, Dick," Donna breathes, her eyes full of sorrow in ways he can no longer express.

This time it's him who locks up from the sudden hug even though it's Donna, his Donna. He buries his face into her shoulder, breathes in the scent of kindling fire. Dick can hear the crackling and spitting, imagines a flame fueling her powers.

Once again, he wonders: Did they return because they were always meant to, or did they return because he intervened? And if they did, what does it mean?

.

On a day of sorrows, the heroes of their galaxy avert the end of the world, and Dick meets Kyle Rayner, White Lantern extraordinaire.

And Dick recognizes a power reversed. Denies what that might mean.


End file.
